Gnomes! (HUH) What are they good for? Absolutely nothing!

I didn't like gnomes until Eberron. Both 4e and Pathfinder also took steps to make them "worthwhile" and serious.

They weren't in Lord of the Rings, which meant TSR and WotC had to invent hooks for them, which they were very slow in doing. They became a weird mishmash between dwarves and elves with a collection of abilities with no unifying theme (close to nature and good at illusions and good at machinery and like to prank people). FR gnomes seemed like nothing but a joke, unless R. A. Salvatore was writing about a minor character. Dragonlance gnomes seemed like a joke, period.

Currently they're close to nature, but are still distinct from elves/eladrin (in 4e and Pathfinder). The Eberron version wasn't really fey in 3.5 but they didn't lose anything going into 4e.

I doubt anyone at TSR or WotC was thinking "lawn gnomes" but probably "small spellcaster". Starting in 3e even that niche was worn away.

Yeah I'm not really knocking them mechanically. I'm most familiar with the 4e lawn ornament, er, gnome, which could turn invisible for a turn at first level. Not too shabby, but that's not what bugs me about 'em.

Like you said, they're a mish-mash of traits that elves/dwarves/halflings aren't using at the moment.
 

log in or register to remove this ad

That's interesting, I did not know that. Although I'm trying to visualize exactly how a gnome would use a long sword one-handed. Were they much larger in 1e?!?

Nope. 3'9" is max height for a gnome. Gnomes and dwarves can use any one handed weapon as long as it is not longer than they are tall, due to their stockiness. Base height for a gnome is 42 inches, plus or minus 1-3 inches. A long sword is 42 inches long, so as long as you don't roll badly for height, you can use a long sword.
 

Nope. 3'9" is max height for a gnome. Gnomes and dwarves can use any one handed weapon as long as it is not longer than they are tall, due to their stockiness. Base height for a gnome is 42 inches, plus or minus 1-3 inches. A long sword is 42 inches long, so as long as you don't roll badly for height, you can use a long sword.
So in 1e, gnomes and dwarves could use oversize weapons... because they were fat?!?

*boggles*
 

Oh joy. Is it that time already? Pardon me while I reprint my post from the last "what's the point to gnomes" thread....

Here's a slightly more exhaustive rundown of gnomes in my campaign. I feel these are true to the spirit of gnomes as presented in most of D&D, but have their own identity separate from elves, dwarves, and halflings.

Gnomes live in the wild border lands, in hills and moors and woodlands. They are highly valued by adventurers and other who sojourn into the wild places, for a gnomish village is often the closest and safest refuge to a dungeon or ruin. In the summer months most gnomes live in small family steadings, or warrens, scattered throughout their domain, and in the winter they gather in large winterhalls dug below the roots of the deep forest. The winterhalls are where gnomes keep their records, libraries, and schools, and the most accomplished gnomish spellcasters remain in residence here throughout the year.

Gnomes are independent, preferring their own rulers to those of other races, and both adaptable and militant when necessary, able to field short-bow and hand-axe wielding guerrilla fighters as well as companies of crossbowmen and pikemen. Their proficiency in digging and tunneling allows them to quickly seed a battlefield with pits, spikes, ditches, and ramparts, as well as sap fortifications and enemy emplacements.

They are clever, careful, and cunning, fond of puzzles, riddles, and esoteric lore. They consider themselves guardians of knowledge the other races have forgotten, and are driven by a sometimes almost pathological need to "know more". In a well-balanced gnome (and most are) this drive manifests itself as a constant curiosity and inquiry into the world, and is lightened by a childlike sense of levity and joy. They do not hoard knowledge, but seek experience for its own sake. Gnomes who become bards or minstrels do so to travel and interact with people, and satisfy their curiosity in that way.

It is not difficult, however, for a gnome to become consumed by their thirst for knowledge. This doesn't usually manifest as cackling, handwringing evil so much as a cold amorality; nothing matters except their obsession. Some, like the spriggan or fhmor, manifest this through greed or hoarding; others with intricate deceptions and manipulations. The svartneblin are among these; gnomes that have become so obsessed with deception that their cities contain illusions so deep not even they know what is real, and where interaction between two individuals is so rare and so clouded they kidnap human children to serve them and supplement their numbers, returning and abandoning them to the upper world when they reach adulthood, prematurely wizened and bent, with senses honed by years in a glamoured underworld, and utterly overwhelmed in the sunlight.

Metagame notes:

  • I haven't used halflings in my campaigns for years, finding them unheroic and frankly rather boring. I'm reconsidering that decision, but halflings would be rebranded as domovii and described as something like "humanity's familiars", a quasi-fey race that lives in symbosis with humans. In any case, I see the similarities between halflings and gnomes as pretty much height and nothing else.
  • Gnomes fill some pretty classic fairy-tale roles that aren't filled by the "big four".
  • I find tinker gnomes grating. Really, really, grating.
  • Kender are twits*. Gnomes aren't twits. They are curious, even recklessly curious, but they're not fearless, they're not stupid, and they have a plan.
  • Gnomes as fey is fine, but it's not enough to just say that they are fey. What does that mean? How does "being fey" manifest?
  • I find it both amusing and depressing that so many people accuse gnomes of being weak imitations of elves and dwarves, as if not being copied from Middle-Earth somehow makes them less original.

Read more: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?333017-Bring-Back-Gnomes!/page4#ixzz2pa1EH0oJ

*I mean this in the very nicest way.
 
Last edited:

Stocky does not mean fat. Today's baseball players follow a similar logic. Mark Mcgwire used a bigger heavier bat than derek Jeter. Babe Ruth, who was a tiny man by today's standards, was reported to have used a 54 0z bat. Derek Jeter uses a 32 oz bat. Guess which one is/was taller?
 

Where did this "trickster" crap come from anyway? I don't remember that before 3e, though I barely played 2nd edition.


I think it actually started in 1e, in Roger E. Moore's Point of View articles. I could be misremembering, but the 1e DDG says of Garl Glittergold, "...there is another side to Garl than that of the witty adventurer who collapsed the Kobold King's cavern.... Garl is a grim and determined war leader who outthinks as well as outfights his opponents." I suspect Moore riffed off of that.
 

Hey at least you HAVE a back-story for your gnomes!

That was mostly the player's fault.

The elves left in the Fey Lands were just figureheads and skill-less nobles standing over the rock gnome industrial and forest agricultural complex that ran fey economy.

The PCs just failed a quest to protect the Royal Palace from being burned down by drow and their Underdark allies. The gnomes official took over after the PCs failed as the elves were blamed for hiring them.
 

I think it actually started in 1e, in Roger E. Moore's Point of View articles. I could be misremembering, but the 1e DDG says of Garl Glittergold, "...there is another side to Garl than that of the witty adventurer who collapsed the Kobold King's cavern.... Garl is a grim and determined war leader who outthinks as well as outfights his opponents." I suspect Moore riffed off of that.

That sounds about right to me because I don't recall much on gnomes being tricksters before Moore's POV article (great set of articles, by the way).

As far as what the gnome's niche is - to provide a magical counterpart to dwarves fighters and halfling thieves.
 

They're also the only demi-human race in 1st edition that could be illusionists. And the only race that could be a multiclass illusionist/thief. I think that's what the trickster idea grew out of.
 

Without Gnomes, the whole bloody world would be barefoot.

One of the problems with races like Gnomes not having a 'niche' is that so many people seem to think that every race has to be in every world. Cut back on the fauna a bit and you can slot Gnomes in pretty easily. If you must throw everything into the mix perhaps consider them to be 'Forest Dwarves', or something similar. Maybe consider them to be Forest Sprites.

There's always a way to make them fit, if you want to, but it's easier if you don't have the whole bloody zoo traipsing around your campaign.
 

Remove ads

Top